WASHINGTON–Just when you thought nobody around here could agree on anything, Democrats and Republicans in Congress come together to unanimously express their unified and unwavering view of the innocent American taxpayer: SCREW YOU!

That’s right. You can’t get these people to agree on whether or not it’s raining outside, but when it comes to their deep disdain for us suckers paying all the bills around here, a hot case of venereal bipartisanship breaks out all over the place.

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Over the weekend, the House held a vote and agreed–without a single exception–that when this government shutdown is all over, all these “non-essential” government bureaucrats who have been loafing around at home all this time will all be given back pay for work they did not perform.

So instead of getting a little taste of the furloughs, layoffs, and firings private American workers have been suffering for years in this nasty economy, these federal bureaucrats would be granted extended paid vacations.

Throughout history, federal government shutdowns have carried their own unique silver lining: the federal government was shut down.

It is, literally, the only time we innocent taxpayers get any relief from this crowd of bureaucrats who want to control every little aspect of our lives, spend all of our money, and wreck out good credit.

Sure, during a government shutdown, we have to endure ten times more from the media in full hissy-fit over their beloved federal government getting a little temporary trim. But at least it is a rare reprieve for us taxpayers from having to pay all of these “non-essential” bureaucrats in the federal government.

And they actually call them that. “Non-essential.” How does one come back to work after realizing you are “non-essential”? In the private sector, “non-essential” is called “unemployed.”

But here in the la-la land of happy bureaucrats, “non-essential” is just a temporary little spell that happens every 15 years or so when politicians get into such a fracas that they make Babylon look like the Garden of Eden.

This being the federal government, taxpayers are not the only ones getting screwed.

How about all the poor chumps in the federal government deemed “essential”? They are still working and probably working twice as hard. And yet, they know full-well that when their “non-essential” colleagues return from their extended R & R, those loafers are sure to be paid for all the work that they did not perform.

That’s the federal government for you. It always pays people not to work and punishes those who do.